Local and state candidates had a Tuesday deadline to turn in their quarterly disclosure reports to the Missouri Ethics Commission, but since the Joplin Globe only runs money in politics stories in its Sunday edition, local readers had to wait five days to get the rundown.
That being said, as always reporter Joe Hadsall is thorough in his work. Only one problem: His article points out the glaring need for someone to write a political thesaurus.
At least 13 times Hadsall refers to the candidates' war chests. Among those having such war chests were: Gary Nodler, Jack Goodman, Kevin Wilson, Bryan Stevenson, Marilyn Ruestman, Ron Richard, Steve Hunter, Tom Flanigan, Ed Emery, Margaret Donnelly, Chris Koster, Jeff Harris, Jay Nixon, Sarah Steelman, and Kenny Hulshof. That adds up to 15, but one of Hadsall's war chests references covered Nixon, Mrs. Steelman, and Hulshof.
This is another one of those cases in which an alert editor should have caught this. Hadsall's work is consistently solid, and his editors should be catching these minor, but still irritating problems.
***
Back to the initial comment on this post. The Globe's decision to address issues of money in politics was long overdue, Having a weekly column is an excellent idea...but not at the expense of any other mention of campaign financing. Newspapers across the state provided their readers with stories July 15 and in the days that followed exploring various state and local races.
Most of the information in the Globe article has already been printed in other sources. The weekly column should be more of a review and an examination of the effect money, whether it be in campaign contributions or in the form of lobbyists' gifts has on our political system. The column should not be the only time the subject is addressed in the Globe.
No comments:
Post a Comment